Laurie Cass - Bookmobile Cat 02 - Tailing a Tabby

by Laurie Cass

  I was aware of the stupidity of the thoughts running through my brain, but I didn’t try to stop them. If I stopped them, I might start thinking about how scared I was, and there was no way that could be a good thing.

  Closer. I had to get closer…

  A loud metallic crash hit the dock, followed by an odd wooden thumping sound. Cade had run out of rocks. He’d heaved the bucket at Brett and now he had nothing left to throw.

  It was up to me.

  Karringer lifted the gun in Cade’s direction. Time slowed. I saw nothing except the end of that gun, felt nothing, heard nothing except—

  “MRRR!” Eddie’s yowl came from the roof.

  Karringer jumped when Eddie shrieked, and let his gun arm drop.

  Perfect, because I knew what had happened. That wooden sound I’d heard. The picnic basket. Eddie had oozed himself into his old cat carrier, hoping he was going to get a ride on the bookmobile. No wonder Cade had said it was heavy. Now Eddie was out and wanting off the roof.

  I planted my feet, pulled my arm back across my body, cocked my wrist, and whipped the cutting board at Karringer, Frisbee-style.

  “Uhh…” Karringer staggered back, his arms flailing.

  I’d hit him! From the way he was clutching at his side, I’d skimmed his ribs instead of knocking away the gun, but I’d actually hit him!

  Karringer staggered forward, falling against the boat’s railing, trying to recover his balance, his arms whirling.

  Something long and skinny whizzed past my head. Cade’s cane thumped Karringer in the wrist. The gun clattered to the boat’s deck and skittered away.

  I dashed forward and scooped it up, pulling the lethal thing out of Karringer’s reach.

  He glared at me, a look full of such malevolence and hate that I took a step back. Librarians are used to many things, but pure unadulterated hatred is not one of them.

  “Minnie,” Cade said. “Do you… ?”

  I pointed the business end of the gun straight at Karringer’s center mass. “Yes,” I said confidently, sliding back the pistol’s chamber. “I do.” My self-defense classes hadn’t just included lessons in close combat. I didn’t know if I could actually fire a gun at a human being, but Karringer didn’t know that.

  He glared at me, glared at Cade, uttered an extremely rude curse, then turned and ran down the dock. For the briefest fraction of a second, I paused. Chase him? Let him go? If I let him go, what were the odds that he’d disappear?

  “I’m going after him,” I yelled to Cade as I scrambled over the railing. “Call nine-one-one!”

  “Minnie, I dropped my phone. I think it’s in the water.” He stumbled over to his cane and picked it up.

  I reached into my pocket and tossed my cell over to him. “That button on the bottom turns it on and—”

  “Tell me in the car,” he said. “I’m coming with you.”

  I opened my mouth. Shut it. There wasn’t time to argue. “Come on.” I glanced up to the roof, but I couldn’t even see Eddie. No doubt he’d settled down onto the cushion where I’d been and was already asleep. “Be back soon,” I whispered.

  Fast as I could, I dodged inside the houseboat. I put the gun’s safety on, grabbed my backpack from the dining table, and tossed in the gun, urgency tugging at me hard.

  We clattered down to the dock, me first, Cade coming behind me, his stroke-induced limp slowing him down. In what felt like hours, but was probably barely a minute, we were in my car and away.

  I braked hard when we reached the road. Which way had he gone? If I was a killer trying to run away from people who could put me in jail, would I turn left, heading toward a road that would take me north and away from towns and houses and anyone who might be able to identify me? Or would I go straight into Chilson, then through and past town, to head downstate and lose myself in the downstate crowds?

  “That way.” Cade pointed straight.

  I squinted and took my foot off the brake, but I didn’t see any taillights. “I don’t—”

  “There was movement. No lights, just movement.”

  I still didn’t see anything, but I trusted Cade’s judgment. My right foot smacked the gas pedal down hard, and my little car did its best to roar forward.

  “It’s white,” Cade said. “And… there!”

  Finally I did see something. The vehicle was small and white and had a single occupant. Karringer was behind the wheel of an electric golf cart.

  “No wonder we didn’t hear him drive up,” I said. Golf carts were a common means of transportation for many people in resort communities, but I’d never once thought that Karringer would have one. How had he… ?

  I shook my head. Didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was keeping track of him until the police showed up. Which shouldn’t be too hard, since even the top speed of even the fastest golf cart was… well, whatever it was, it had to be less than what my car could do.

  We sped down the street, closing in fast on Karringer. “Call nine-one-one,” I told Cade again. “Tell them we’ll follow him until someone catches up to us.”

  Cade pushed at the phone’s buttons and soon he was chatting with a helpful young man from dispatch.

  “Where are we at this moment?” Cade asked the dispatcher’s question out loud and glanced out the window. “Traveling east on Main Street, just passed the Hill Avenue intersection and—Minnie, he’s turning left!”

  I pounded the steering wheel in frustration. Karringer knew the streets and sidewalks of Chilson better than I’d expected. He’d turned into the narrow park where I’d sat with Detective Inwood and Deputy Wolverson. This end, the downtown end, was relatively flat, but it descended quickly toward a short street that ran along the lake’s edge. And though the golf cart’s width would easily zip down the sidewalk, there was no way my car would fit between the stonework planters.

  The car’s brakes screeched as I pushed hard on the pedal. The second we came to a complete stop, I opened my door and was outside.

  I was halfway around the car and picking up speed when I heard the passenger door open. “Key’s in the ignition,” I called. “Drive around to the bottom of the hill. Make sure he doesn’t get out.”

  Cade’s voice came through the night. “Take your phone, Minnie. No arguments.”

  I wanted to argue, of course, but there wasn’t time. The dim illumination from the few streetlights wasn’t enough to guarantee catching a beach ball if it had been thrown straight at me, so I skidded to a halt, reversed direction, ran back, grabbed the phone from Cade’s outstretched hand, and took off running again.

  “Be careful,” Cade shouted. I lifted one hand in a wave of agreement and kept on going.

  What little light there had been up on the road filtered away quickly in the ornamental trees that dotted the sidewalk. Until tonight, I’d always enjoyed this hidden pathway, smiling every time I walked its brick-lined walk that curled around trees and shrubs and landscaped flower beds.

  Now, as I pounded a straight path, running over grass, sidewalk, wood chips, and whatever else lay in my way, I hoped a small part of my brain would remember where the big rocks were and implement that memory in such a way that would allow me to avoid running straight into something and hurting myself so badly that, this time, Cade would be the one to take me to the emergency room.

  Down the sidewalk, down the hill, down toward Janay Lake. If Karringer made it to the street that lay at the end of the park, he could zoom off in two different directions. And if he made it to the street before we caught up to him, we wouldn’t know in which direction he’d gone. We’d lose him, maybe forever.

  An insistent squawking noise came from the phone. Right. Cade had been chatting with the 911 dispatcher. But I was running flat out and had no breath to spare for talking. From what Cade had told him, maybe they’d anticipate what was happening. Maybe a police vehicle was
already speeding on its way to intercept Karringer.

  Nice thought, but I couldn’t count on it.

  I hurdled a flat rock that, if I remembered correctly, held a bronze marker that dedicated the park to a former mayor of Chilson. The perfectly executed leap boosted my confidence and I found that I hadn’t been running as fast as I could. Not quite.

  Run, Minnie, run, I told myself. For Carissa. For Cade.

  I don’t know if it was because I’d sped up or if Karringer had slowed, thinking that he’d lost us in his clever turn into the park, but I finally saw the back end of the golf cart. So far ahead, though, that I wasn’t sure I’d be able to catch up. I had to stop him… but how?

  Come on, Cade, I thought.

  “Stop!” I yelled, loud as I could. “Stop right now!”

  Karringer’s head swiveled around and the golf cart started drifting to the right. I saw his mouth move when he caught sight of me, and it didn’t look like a very nice word that he said. He turned back around, but by the time he’d done so, the cart was headed directly toward a large and very solid-looking trash container.

  He wrenched the steering wheel around. The cart turned hard. Too hard. In one quick movement, it fell on its side.

  Car headlights swept across the scene, pinning Karringer down with its bright beams. My car, since I heard Cade’s voice calling, “Minnie! Minnie, are you all right?”

  “Fine,” I said, waving, and ran to Karringer. His legs were trapped underneath the golf cart.

  “I think my ankle’s broken,” he croaked. “I think it’s bleeding. You have to help me.”

  With great caution, I approached. “You’re hurt?” If he was injured, I did need to help him. And if his ankle was broken, he wouldn’t be running away. I edged closer, trying to see.

  “Minnie!” Cade was limping fast, cane in one hand and the gun in the other. “Stay back! I’m sure he’s trying to get you close enough to grab and use as a hostage.”

  I backpedaled, my eyes wide.

  Karringer cursed.

  “Thanks,” I breathed to Cade as he came up to me. “Sometimes I forget how naïve I am.”

  “Part of your charm, dear Minnie,” he said. “You are all right, aren’t you?”

  “Pretty as a picture,” I said. “You?”

  “Fit as a fiddle.”

  Karringer was still whining about his ankle, and off in the distance, we heard the welcome sound of sirens rushing toward us.

  “Well, my dear,” Cade said, “I’d say Trap Two is turning out terrifically.”

  I laughed, and was pleased that only the teensiest bit of it sounded out of control. “Totally.”

  Karringer made one more try to wriggle out from under the golf cart, but Cade stepped forward, raising the gun. I grabbed a rock from the nearest flower bed and Karringer fell back, giving up.

  Trap Two was Tremendous.

  Chapter 21

  The next morning, I’d given Kristen the short version of the previous evening’s events, but she hadn’t had time for the full-length story.

  “Stupid restaurant,” she’d muttered. “Why can’t I have a Monday-through-Friday job like everybody else?”

  “You did, remember? You hated it.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Her smile came through the phone. “I did, didn’t I?”

  We scheduled a confab on the marina’s patio, and I headed up to the boardinghouse for the last of the big summer breakfasts.

  Come Sunday afternoon, Kristen and Eddie and I were comfortably sprawled out in the warm sun. Kristen and her long legs, which were somehow deeply tanned in spite of her long hours at the restaurant, were stretched across two chairs that she’d dragged together. Eddie and I were sharing a glider love seat that, for the first time all summer, was not squeaking on the forward glide. Either Chris had finally remembered to oil it or the people in the closest boat slip had done it themselves.

  “Spill,” Kristen said lazily, her face lifted to the sun. “Top to bottom.”

  So I did. She’d known bits of it before, but now I told her everything. I told her about Barb calling me when Cade had been questioned by the police, told her about my promise to Cade, told her about the accidents and the various possible implications, told her about Greg Plassey and Trock Farrand and Hugo Edel and Carissa’s friend Jari. I told her about the traps, about the weekends, and about Eddie being on the roof and saving the day. I did not tell her about the rabbits.

  Kristen turned toward me and opened one eye. “So it was the Weasel?”

  I nodded. “Brett Karringer. After the police got there, he wouldn’t stop talking. That Deputy…” I paused. “Ash Wolverson, do you know him?”

  Kristen shook her head, which meant Wolverson wasn’t from Chilson. I felt a small bleat of disappointment; I’d been a little curious about the man. “Anyway, after the police showed up, Brett confessed to everything. It was kind of weird, actually.”

  It had been very weird. Uncomfortable didn’t begin to explain how I’d felt, stuck there until the police gave me permission to go, having to listen to Brett Karringer talk on and on as if he’d never stop.

  “I love her so much,” he’d said. “It was the worst torture to see her throwing herself at those older guys. She was the love of my life. Maybe she didn’t know it, but she would have, I know she would have. All I had to do was show her how much I loved her, that’s all.”

  At that point, Deputy Wolverson had pulled him to his uninjured feet. The effort didn’t stop Brett from talking.

  “I knew I had to do something after I saw her picture with you on Facebook.” He practically spat at Cade. “She was seeing way too much of you. I couldn’t let that keep happening.”

  Cade murmured something indistinguishable and Deputy Wolverson made enough of an encouraging noise that Karringer kept going.

  “Yeah, I’ve been one of her Facebook friends for years, not that she knew it was me,” he said, smirking. “I just tracked down a yearbook from her high school, found some guy who wasn’t on Facebook, and signed up to be him. She friended me right away, asking if I was still dating Mimi Martin.”

  He laughed at his own cleverness.

  I shivered.

  “The way she posted stuff online,” Karringer went on, “it was the easiest thing ever to see what she was up to. I can’t believe some of the stuff she posted. I mean, if someone was out to get her, it would have been a piece of cake to track her down.” He shook his head, then grinned at Cade. “That phone call I made got you to come running, didn’t it?”

  I glanced over. Cade was staring at Karringer with an expression that I couldn’t quite interpret, and wasn’t sure I wanted to.

  Karringer tried to point at Cade. His movements were now restricted by the handcuffs that the deputy had placed around his wrists. “I’m the one who really loved her. Not you, not Plassey, not Farrand, not Edel, not anyone. Me! I was the one!”

  He stopped, blew out a few guttural breaths, then slid into a kind of whine. “I had to take care of all those guys she posted about on Facebook. I thought those accidents would be just the ticket, but none of them worked the way they should have. I knew I’d have to try again, so I got a gun, but I had to lie low after Carissa. Didn’t want to make it look too obvious, you know?”

  “You did something to Greg’s ladder, didn’t you?” I asked.

  Karringer chuckled. “Big expensive fence he put up doesn’t do much good when he gives the code to all his friends. Pretty smart of me to be his friend, huh? I figured that was the way to go after threatening Edel didn’t work. Telling Farrand to keep his hands off didn’t work, either.”

  He’d shaken his head. “All those old guys, it didn’t make sense for Carissa to be with them. It wasn’t right, you know? I had to stop her from wasting her life. I wanted to kill you worst of all.” Karringer had nodded at Cade. “But I couldn’t wo
rk out how, not if I wanted to set you up for Carissa’s murder.”

  “Sorry about that,” Cade had said dryly.

  “Yeah, me, too.” Karringer had shrugged as the deputy guided him into the back of the police car. “Sometimes things just don’t work out the way you want.”

  And sometimes they did. I’d used my cell phone to record every bit of Karringer’s confession, and had promptly sent the digital file to Detectives Devereaux and Inwood. Almost as promptly, Detective Inwood had called to thank me, saying it would help build the case against Karringer.

  “Really?” I asked.

  “Everything helps,” Inwood said. “Even if he pleads out, it speeds things up when the bad guy knows he was caught on tape, dead to rights. So, thank you.”

  “Oh. Well, you’re welcome, then.”

  “How did Wolverson do?” Inwood had asked.

  Do what? I’d wondered.

  “You knew that Don and I have been training Wolverson up to detective, didn’t you?”

  Not sure how I could have known that since no one had told me, but whatever. “He did just fine,” I’d said.

  Inwood had gone on to describe the college courses Wolverson would be taking, and when we hung up, I knew more than I’d thought I ever would about the requirements for becoming a detective in the Tonedagana Sheriff’s Office.

  Kristen reached out for a potato chip and scooped it deep into the ultrafancy dip I’d slapped together half an hour earlier: dried onion soup mix in a container of sour cream.

  While she concentrated on getting all the dip into her mouth without dropping any on her shirt, I thought back to the conversation I’d had yesterday with Cade. The aide who’d lied about his whereabouts the night of the murder had been put on suspension, but Cade had made a stand for her and she would keep her job.

  Plus, Cade was going to contact Carissa’s family and tell them he’d like to donate a painting to Carissa’s favorite charity for a fund-raising auction, and that they could choose any painting currently on display anywhere in the world for the donation.